In the related art, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) developed for restoring a blood flow is performed as a method of treatment of ischemic heart diseases such as angina pectoris and myocardial infarction. The PCI includes inserting a balloon into a stenosed site or an occluded site in a coronary artery and dilating the balloon to forcedly widen the stenosed site or the occluded site.
A contrast agent is administered to the coronary artery, and then the PCI is performed while monitoring the stenosed site or the occluded site under X-ray fluoroscopy.
When the PCI is performed for patients having a renal dysfunction, contrast-induced nephropathy may result due to side effects of the contrast agent, and in some cases, dialysis treatment may be required.
The cause is not clearly defined, but one of the conceivable causes is a vascular factors such as renal ischemia caused by decreases of renal perfusion and glomerular filtration rate as a result of the contrast agent flowing into kidney and triggering renovascular contraction.
In addition, it is also known that the contrast agent is directly cytotoxic for renal tubular cells.
Therefore, various methods for removing a contrast agent in blood vessels have been proposed.
For example, a method of sucking and draining out a contrast agent, which has been injected into the coronary artery for the PCI and flows into coronary sinus via the coronary venous, with a device inserted into the right atrium is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,300,429.
By sucking and draining the contrast agent in the coronary sinus, the contrast agent is removed effectively before spreading out, and thus an influence of the contrast agent on a living body can be reduced.